


Same difference

by JauntyHako



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Angst, Gen, because this might be the most ridiculously awesome franchise in the whole world, but god knows i can and will squeeze some angst out of it and if it kills me, genderqueer Boss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 17:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4108906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JauntyHako/pseuds/JauntyHako
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little bit about the similarities between Matt Miller and Carlos Mendoza. Can be read as pre-slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same difference

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably write a followup for this, sometime soon-ish, because I kinda like the dynamic between Matt and the Boss in IV, and since shipper-me can't just appreciate a good Mass Effect shout-out in a game that is so not made for serious shipping, there will be a ton of just that.  
> Also I've been playing SR 2 (curse everything for the first one being console-only) and holy crap, I did not expect what I got. I knew Carlos was going to die, but his death scene punched me in the gut something good.

The boss liked to rate questions on a personal scale. 1 was for the good ones, the kinds that Johnny used to ask. Like “Why not take the chopper _and_ the rocket launcher?” or “How many grenades fit into a Ronin's body without his friends carrying him into their crib noticing?” (The answer to that last one being technically 16 but they ended up doing only fifteen since neither of them wanted to shove in the last one)

Around five on his question scale were the annoying ones, the kinds the press used to ask him all the time when he ran for president. Usually dealing with those was easy, one bullet per question mark, but those days he had to be fucking civil about it. So they were annoying but he wouldn't be The Boss if he couldn't handle them.

Nines and tens were reserved for the hard questions. The ones that had him stay up all night, without hoes and bitches to keep him company, staring at the ceiling. There weren't many of them.

_Why'd Aisha call out to me?_

_If Jessica was your daughter, how far would you want me to go?_

_How could you let Johnny die?_

And now, courtesy of Matt Miller who had already scored a ten once, had to add another bloody fucking question to that list.

“Who's Carlos?”

Fuck Matt Miller. Fuck that little nerdy kid with his big blue eyes and his smeared lipstick and his twitching hands. Fuck him and whoever put that question in his mouth. Though the boss had an inkling where he might have caught that name.

“Why'd you want to know?”

Matt shifted, not making eye contact while simultaneously trying to discreetly inch away from the girl sidling up to him. He had his jacket zipped closed, hands in his lap, knees drawn tight. He wasn't good with people as a general rule. A Saints crib in full action, even simulated, would have thrown even the most hardened social butterfly for a loop.

“It's just … I heard Shaundi and Pierce talking about me and why you still keep me around even though I'm useless -”

“You're not useless.” The boss interrupted. “You're doing all this geeky cyber shit. Without you we'd be a lot poorer and a lot less informed.”

“You have Kinzie for that …” Matt stopped. “But that's not what I wanted to talk about. It's not important. The point is, Pierce said that you have a soft spot for me because I remind you of Carlos.”

The boss rubbed his temples in an attempt to drive the exhaustion off. Fuck Jesus, it'd been over ten years.

“Why not look him up in the databases? Or hell, use the time travel machine.”

“I … considered it. But I wanted to ask you first. This feels personal.”

There were maybe a handful of people still alive who knew about Carlos, as he'd never made it a habit to dwell on the past. And Matt had been a Saint, more or less, for about as long as they had this space ship but hell he earned his place. He deserved to know.

“Come on.”

 

 

This wasn't the same simulation Zinyak put them in. This was, in fact an exact copy of Earth from just a few days before the alien attack down to every last detail. So when the Boss told Matt to shut the door behind them and reached under his bed for the box it was there, solid and secure in his hand, like the real thing.

 

“Sit.” he said to Matt who stood in the doorframe looking about one third awed and two thirds frightened. Being alone with the Boss usually meant one of two things: sex or death. Seeing as the kid had little experiences with either his reaction was understandable. As was the fact that he sat down onto the bed next to him like he expected the mattress to be stuffed with explosives.

The box was large enough to hold a pistol and spare ammo, a pre-paid phone with the most important numbers, some cash, car keys to various vehicles stored throughout the city, and pictures. A whole stack of them, some fairly new, others yellowed and torn at the edges.

“Emergency kit. The building could come down and the material would hold. In it you put everything you need to take with you if you need to leave in a hurry.” the Boss explained at Matt's questioning glance. “You should get yourself one.”

Matt nodded politely, eyes transfixed on the stack of pictures. On top was a picture of Shaundi's birthday party from just a few weeks back. After setting various things on fire in time periods of Shaundi's choosing, they'd stopped at the Broken Shillelagh and that was where the picture was taken, the whole gang in various states of drunkenness, Matt himself squeezed between Johnny and Pierce, grinning uncertainly.

The picture got replaced by others as the Boss rifled through the stack, some of them familiar to Matt – he recognised the space ship well enough as well as some parts of the White House and Steelport around the time he'd first met the Saints. Others, between the familiar ones, showed foreign places and people. Gat was in some, the Boss in others. There were a good dozen pictures, cracked as if folded and stained with something dark as if they'd been taken out and carried around a lot, that showed Gat with a black woman, usually grinning or kissing or both. Then the Boss took out one picture and handed it to Matt.

There was an angel in the background that looked vaguely familiar until he remembered that he'd seen those statues of Planet Saint's and as collectible figures. This angel didn't throne above a cheap clothing chain, but in something that looked, from the washed stone walls like something older. It was draped in purple light chains which subtracted from its classiness but added the typical Saints charm to it. And in the front, arms thrown around each other's shoulders stood five people posing like the kings of the earth.

“This is from Stilwater, isn't it?” he asked. “I would have never recognised Shaundi if we didn't meet her past self in the simulation.”

The boss chuckled.

“Yeah, we all changed a lot. Except for Johnny. You can't trump that much awesome.”

“Careful. Your heart eyes are showing.” Matt teased and got a light tap on the head for it. Which was strange because the Boss didn't do gentle. He punched you in the face or he mocked you if you were lucky enough to be his friend.

“Shut up, Miller. You recognise Pierce?”

“The guy looking like a parody of every gangster movie ever?”

“That's the one. The vision of a man in the middle is of course yours truly.”

Only that back in the day the Boss dressed a lot less flashy. Ruffles didn't feature at all. His hair wasn't styled elaborately like it was now and he looked as if he was still uncomfortable in skirts. It occurred to Matt that he'd always assumed the Boss had always been the overconfident but charming ass that he was now, not so much toying with the line between feminity and masculinty as tying it into a noose and stringing up the entire notion of gender binaries by its balls.

Which left only one person in the picture unaccounted for.

“That's Carlos?”

This time the Boss only nodded.

If Pierce thought there was any semblance between him and Carlos it sure as hell wasn't in looks. Carlos was all gangster bravado, Matt all cyberpunk chic, Carlos tried to look taller than he really was while Matt knew of his tendency to hunch his shoulders when around other people. From looks alone he saw no indication of why the Boss would feel reminded of him when he saw Matt.

“We met in prison. He got himself busted just to spring me out. He was a good kid.”

Something in that last sentence jarred Matt. Maybe it was the word 'was' or maybe the way the Boss said 'kid' not unlike he used to refer to him.

“He was the youngest of you guys.” he whispered, fearing where this was bound to go but unable to rein in his curiousity.

“Yeah. Not as young as you were when you first started out with the fucking gangs, but young enough.”

Young enough to make it hurt. Matt's throat went dry but luckily the Boss didn't need any more prompting.

“He joined up with the Saints because of me. Had a fucking bad case of hero worship going on, god knows why. Or fuck, maybe he did all that out of the goodness of his fucking heart. We went up against that one gang then, the Brotherhood. This bitch Jessica got him, tied him to a truck …”

And started driving. Killbane had threatened to do the same thing more than once to Matt and the DeWynters. Your bones would break in every curve he'd say, the joints in your knees would crack under the strain, your skin aflame as it was grated on the asphalt. The pain worse than being set on fire, and death coming even slower. It was that threat that had Matt shaking most of all when he took his leave from Killbane and hearing it happening before didn't to anything to ease his mind.

“When I finally got the fucking truck to stop, he was almost dead. Not to shoot him would have been cruel.”

Matt pretended not to see the way the Boss clutched the stack of pictures.

“There was nothing you could have done …” he started, aching to fill the silence.

“The hell I could. He was in way over his head and I fucking knew it. But what the hell, let him run with us, right? We weren't fucking celebrities then, we were just a bunch of gang bangers who thought the world should belong to us. I shouldn't have let him join up or shouldn't have put him on the Brotherhood's trail. Fucking stupid thing to do, letting a kid join the Saints.”

“You let me join.”

There was a moment where Matt thought he'd get punched after all. Don't piss off the Boss, he reminded himself, first rule after Don't piss off Johnny Gat. He flinched when the Boss reached out to him but he only took the picture out of his hands, again too gentle for a man who thought homicidal sociopathy was in any way puckish.

“That's different.” he said, brushing over the likeness of Carlos with his thumb.

“Why?”

“Because Maero already had you!” The Boss bursted out. “The fuck was I supposed to do? Kill a fucking sixteen year old or watch as someone else did it for me?”

“Killbane.”

“What?”  
“Killbane had me. Not Maero.”

The ensuing stretch of silence left Matt regretting saying anything. He should have kept his mouth shut. It'd been a slip of the tongue.

“Right.” The Boss said, shaking his head. “Fuck, this shit's giving me a headache. Come on, kid, I need some booze. Real booze.”

Matt followed the Boss out of the room and the simulation, wondering what would have happened if Killbane hadn't let him go four years ago. If he'd ended up chained to a truck as well with the Boss sparing him a bullet to end his suffering. But watching the way the Boss looked at him sometimes, he doubted that ending. More likely the Boss would have saved him and if it meant burning the world to the ground. Only that he wasn't sure the Boss would be saving him instead of a memory.

 


End file.
